Data archiving, scientific integrity and public policy

I found this item extremely interesting and of great relevance to many of us at SIS (a shorter version of the issue is here). One of the key sources of evidence used by the IPCC (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change) was data from tree rings. This article describes an author who was interested in looking at the original data set. The problems he encountered included data integrity, lack of metadata, incomplete archiving and more. According to the researcher, a re-analysis of the data comes to different conclusions, which has enormous implications for public policy. So who said the work we do is obscure and unimportant?